I saw an intriguing 60 minutes segment this week outlining the huge numbers of students (and professionals surprisingly) that are wantonly taking ADHD drugs in college for everything from studying and test-taking to pulling all-nighters and writing otherwise boring papers.  I was struck by both the striking proportion of students who admit to this practice and also the nonchalant attitude toward taking medications in the same class as cocaine to do something we’re supposed to confront with our natural abilities – school – and your job.

Staggering Numbers – Students and Professionals

According to their estimates, Among Upper Classes, 50-60 Percent Using ADD/ADHD Drugs Ritalin and Adderall.  The students interviewed said “It’s the norm”.  According to a survey of nearly 2,000 students at the University of Kentucky, 34% of undergrads took attention deficit drugs illegally without a prescription. For perspective, the percentage of students legally taking the drugs (presumably, only a portion even, of these actually need it) is 4%.

Isn’t This Cheating?

Call me old-fashioned, but drinking a soda and getting some fresh air used to be the way college students stayed alert and pulled all-nighters.  And call me ancient to suggest that perhaps an all-nighter wouldn’t even be required if you didn’t procrastinate until the last minute.  But these days, I now see middle school kids walking out of dunkin’ donuts with coffees (this was unheard of when I was growing up and I’m not old) and highschool and college students are taking drugs meant for clinically diagnosed attention disorders.  Is this really any different than “natural athletes competing against athletes on steroids?  If I’m using my own natural ability to study, retain lecture information and take a test and I’m competing against a classful of students taking drugs that (supposedly) increase mental acuity and performance, is that fair?  Do I then need to start taking drugs just to compete?  I mean, many courses grade on a curve, right?

It Doesn’t Matter – Nothing can be Done to Stop It

Whether this is fair or not doesn’t really matter frankly.  The phenomena has arrived and it’s here to stay.  We can’t even keep drugs that are illegal under all circumstances from flooding our country, how would we reasonably expect to curtail the use of legally prescribed drugs?  According to the students in the airing, they simply go to a doctor and say “Oh, I’ve been having trouble concentrating” and the doctor in turn says “Oh, you must have ADHD – here’s a prescription”.  It’s an obvious wink-wink relationship between the sales reps, doctors and patients that is so prevalent in our society.  The interesting part is that the jury’s still out on a) how effective the use of these drugs actually is for college students and b) what the long-term effects are for chronic use and addiction.

The New Normal

I suspect this trend is another new normal for America.  We’re graduating an entire generation of students who are now entering the workforce that are either overtly addicted to ADHD drugs or at least believe that it’s OK to use these drugs enhance their performance and alertness as needed, so this is our future American workforce.  Personally, I don’t feel threatened because intelligence and alertness are just a couple cogs in the wheel of what actually makes for a successful career, but I wonder about my kids.  Will this work its way down to routine use in highschool and earlier?  Will it be “expected” that if you want to be a top student, you’ve gotta use in order to excel?  Who knows?  I had heard of this before, but I was shocked by the prevalence.

Do You Use ADHD Drugs to Enhance Your Performance?

Do You Think It’s Fair?

The universal Preschool movement is picking up steam since Obama took office.  Similar to the bailouts for homeowners and banks that made poor financial decisions by now transferring wealth from the responsible to the irresponsible via TARPs, TALPs and scalps, this effort is meant to provide “free” Pre-K to everyone, which will essentially destroy the one bright spot in American education that hasn’t already been wrecked by government intervention and mediocrity.

How Could Something that’s Free be Bad?

Well, nothing’s free.  It’s a coy political phrase for “taxpayer-funded”, which means you and I (actually, our children, since we are commiting generational crimes with the amount of debt we’re handing to our children).  Right now, pre-schools need to compete with each other for parents’ dollars and enrollment.  As a result of this competition, the schools do their best to hire the best educators, bring the most fun/innovative/educational environment to the children, provide the best services, assurance of safety, etc. – everything you’d want for your youngster.

When a particular teacher or administrator is underperforming, they’re shown the door.  This is American competition/capitalistic reality.  In a public school (free), there are plenty of great teachers (my wife’s one of them), but we’re all familiar with the lousy ones too and with tenure and one of the strongest unions in the nation, they’re there til they want to leave, which, given the generous pensions and benefits, usually means for a very long time.  And it’s not solely a teacher thing really.

The system is broken.  Here’s why:

When we were selecting a preschool for our children, my wife went to 6-8 different preschools, sat in on a class, interviewed the teachers, talked to the administrators and collected information on their programs, hours and costs.  She inquired into the Preschool games, crafts, lesson plans and the overall curriculum to see if it was a fit for our child.  With such diverse options, we were able to sit down and quickly eliminate the schools that failed our critical requirements (i.e. some of the schools employed rather rigid, rote memorization and drills which wouldn’t work for our little guy, perhaps others, but you need to know your kid…another school had a teacher that didn’t seem very warm or friendly which isn’t really a good personality for dealing with 3 and 4 year olds, etc.).  Next, we considered cost.  We could have paid $7500 for “the best” or more like $2500 for our #2 choice.  In taking a pragmatic approach to this level of education and weighing cost/benefit, we went with option #2 (I admit, we didn’t blow the budget to buy “the best” education at 4 years old…we’re saving those dollars now to be able to put our kids through “the best” colleges later which we view as a better ROI).

With public school, you go where you go based on where you live.  There is no competition.  As bad as a school is, kids will continue to go there and taxpayers foot the bill.  There is some accountability, but not enough.  You’re often dealing with administrators trying to fend off angry parents that want to know “what did the teacher do to provoke my child?” rather than looking inward at why their child is acting like a punk and the teacher punished them. They’re also now teaching to the test, focusing so much attention on troubled kids that some students end up board or lost in the mix and so on.

There’s always private school, but my wife’s a public school teacher and that’s a bit hypocritical.  We were both products of the public school system and consider ourselves to be successful, productive and content.  Plus, some of these private schools are charging outrageous fees, more than actual undergraduate college expenses.  I just don’t think the actual difference in performance justifies the fees.  Perhaps if money were no issue to us I’d feel differently about it, but it seems rather silly to me to pay 5 figures for a 1st grade education, on top of the taxes we’re already paying for not sending our kids to a good public school district.  We just moved to one of the better districts and pay the higher taxes to get our kids into a district that’s acceptable to us.  So, we’re voluntarily subjecting ourselves to “the system” for K-12 because the cost/benefit justifies it for the district we’re in, but for Preschool throughout the nation?  Let’s preserve something that’s already working.

What About Parents who can’t Afford Preschool?

Well, most can and those kids already go to Preschool.  And for the ones who can’t afford it, there are Head Start programs and other government funded programs already.  All this proposal would do is shift the burden of payment to all Americans to send all kids to mediocre schools.  So, why should Americans accept the current system of competition and selection of the optimal school for their children and instead settle for government-run public school hell at an even earlier age?

Is there any reason to believe that with lousy performance at the K-12 levels, the government would do any better at running preschools?